Walnut Muffins w/ Coffee Glaze

This little beauty made my husband a very happy man!

When I saw started out making these, I wasn't really sure if it was a cupcake recipe or a muffin recipe. I adapted so many recipes to come up with this, that I had no idea what I was making. I was aiming for a 'muffin', but I didn't follow the usual 'wet bowl', 'dry bowl' method for muffins. I saw a recipe for muffins which called for the egg whites to be beaten to stiff peaks and folded in. It sounded good. This was a little more labor intensive, but well worth it.

The final result though was definitely muffin-like. It is dense (but not heavy), and has a nice crumb to it. And it has the unmistakable flavor of walnuts, which happen to be my husband's favorite! To intensify the nutty flavor, I decided to brown the butter. A good decision! And I made my husband even happier by pairing these muffins with a coffee glaze, and it worked just perfectly together!

My mother, who sampled one of these, said these were the best things to come out of my oven - ever! I don't know if that says a lot about the rest of my cooking, but it does say a lot about these muffins. I guess she's a coffee-walnut fanatic, too. And though I am not, I must still admit that these are G-O-O-D!

Keeping with my latest trend, this is a small batch recipe, and makes 6 muffins.

Walnut Muffins
Loosely adapted from Muffins Galore

Ingredients
100g walnut halves
75g butter
75g sugar
3 eggs, separated
1/2 tsp vanilla
75g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method
1. In a heavy-based saucepan, melt the butter, stirring it often. The butter will froth a lot. After a little while, the frothing will stop, and the butter will start turning darker. Soon you will notice there are tiny brown specks in the butter. Once the butter reaches this point, take it off the heat. You should be able to smell the nutty aroma of the brown butter. It should not smell burnt.
2. Stir in the sugar while the butter is still hot. Set aside to cool.
3. In the meanwhile, in a medium bowl, stir the flour and baking powder together. Retain 6 walnut halves for garnish, and chop the remaining walnuts very fine. Most of the walnuts were almost powdered, but I left a few chunky bits because I knew that's what would be popular here. Stir the walnuts into the flour and set aside.
4. Add the egg yolks and vanilla into the still warm butter-sugar mixture.
5. Stir in the walnut, flour and baking powder mixture.
6. In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold the egg whites into the walnut batter.
7. The final batter will be quite thick, but soft and smooth.
8. Divide the batter into a muffin tray (6 muffins), and bake at 180 for 15-20 minutes or until lightly golden and firm to the touch.
9. Allow them to cool in the tray for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
10. Spread over the coffee glaze, and garnish with a walnut half.


Coffee Glaze
Ingredients
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp instant coffee
1 tsp butter, softened
150g powdered sugar
Method
1. Heat the milk and coffee together until the coffee has completely dissolved. Remove from heat.
2. Add the butter, and stir until the butter has melted.
3. Add the sugar and stir until you have a smooth glaze. If you want a thicker glaze, like the one I've used, you can add more sugar until you get the consistency you want.

Theses muffins are only mildly sweet, and need the sweetness of the glaze. The coffee and walnut flavors go really well together! 

While the texture and consistency is perfect for a breakfast muffin, I know my family would gladly eat these for dessert!